Daniel Francis

Reading the National Narrative

Prize Winner

Jun 3, 2016

thistle.jpg

Nice to see that John Thistle's book, Resettling the Range, has won this year's Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize.

The prize goes to the best scholarly book on a British Columbia subject and at first blush the subject -- the consequences of settlement on the ecology of the province's Interior -- may seem "academic" in the disparaging sense. Far from it. Thistle's prose is very accessible and the story he tells about the eradication of animal species to make way for human activity, specifically ranching, is important, at times even moving.

Congratulations to Dr. Thistle, who is based at the Labrador Institute of Memorial University, a long way from the grasslands of the Cariboo-Chilcotin.